Idea 1: Use the 6 P’s...

The old adage ‘proper planning prevents piss poor performance’ certainly applies to community engagement activity.

Here at Slough we have a developed the following 8 staged checklist to help staff get the most out of running their local community engagement activities:

1. Set your objectives

• Do you understand the context for your engagement activities and what’s driving them? 
• Do you understand where your engagement activity sits within the Councils policy/planning cycles?

2. Set project parameters

• Have you identified all of the goals, outputs and outcomes you want to achieve?

3. Understand your community

• Have you undertaken enough research to understand the communities you need to engage with?
• Are you clear what you need to know and from whom?
• What level of engagement do you need to use with each groups?

4. Set up your engagement activities

• Have you chosen the right engagement methods/techniques to reach the groups you need to engage with?

5. Identifying and managing risk

• Have you developed plans to deal with all of the risks associated with carrying out your engagement activities?

6. Publicity

• Do you have a social media strategy and  or communication plan to advertise your  activities to the groups you need to work with?

7. Launch

8. Close, analyse and feedback

• Are you clear what methods and criteria you will use to evaluate your engagement activities and feedback to residents? 
• You’ll get the best results from your engagement process if you plan it properly.

  

Giant: 

Amanda Renn

Policy & Communications Team

Slough Borough Council

amanda.renn@slough.gov.uk

01753 875560

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

A compendium of hints and tips for online consultation & engagement

Here, at Objective HQ, we’re a bit geeky about public policy and engagement.

Sure, we provide software that is used for collaboration and engagement by around 6,000 public servants in almost 200 public sector agencies so we do have a commercial interest!  But actually we just think it’s a really cool thing to be interested in and we love working with others who share our interest and care about helping to build a better world through high quality public services.  It’s that sociability, that constant drive to work intelligently with others who share our obsession that makes us geeks – and keeps us from straying down the path of nerdiness.

And it’s with this sociability in mind that we’ve worked with other public policy & engagement types to come up with a few ideas for improving online engagement in the public sector. With contributions from ‘giants’ from UK Councils, Government Agencies, Social Media companies and our own Consultation and Policy consultants we hope that it will prove to be a useful starting point for discussion.